Umbrella Network

Umbrella Network was a Layer-2, community-owned decentralized oracle network designed to deliver scalable, low-cost real-world and cross-chain data to DeFi applications. Founded in 2020 by Sam Kim, the project positioned itself as a more cost-effective and data-dense alternative to existing oracle solutions, using Merkle tree compression to record hundreds of data points on-chain in a single transaction. The project announced it would cease all operations in September 2025, and formally shut down on September 30, 2025.

How It Worked

Umbrella's core technical innovation was a Layer-2 data-batching approach. Rather than writing each price feed or data point individually to a blockchain—as conventional Layer-1 oracles do—Umbrella aggregated hundreds or thousands of values into a Merkle tree off-chain and then anchored the tree's root to the target blockchain in a single transaction. Smart contracts consuming any individual data point could verify its integrity against the published root using a cryptographic proof, without requiring every datum to be individually stored on-chain.

The project claimed this structure made Umbrella's on-chain data roughly one-twentieth the cost of a fully Layer-1 oracle equivalent.

Umbrella offered three data delivery modes:

• On-Chain Data (First Class Data / FCD): High-priority feeds written directly on-chain with configurable deviation triggers and heartbeat update parameters, suited for protocols requiring low-latency guarantees.
• Layer 2 Data (L2D): The primary feed category, covering crypto price pairs, indexes, and volatility metrics. Secured and verifiable on-chain via the Merkle root mechanism.
• On-Demand Data: Signed off-chain data for applications—such as perpetuals and spot trading platforms—requiring high-frequency or latency-sensitive feeds without full on-chain storage costs.

Validators and the UMB Token

Umbrella operated under a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) model. Community validators sourced prices from multiple data providers—including centralized feeds and decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap—and participated in consensus rounds to agree on values before any root was written on-chain.

The UMB token served four functions: staking to secure the network, delegating weight to validators, participating in governance, and earning staking rewards and protocol fee distributions. UMB launched as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum in February 2021 at approximately $0.30. It later became available on Binance Smart Chain as well.

In December 2021, Umbrella Network launched a $15 million Oracle Accelerator Program aimed at attracting developers building data-intensive applications on its infrastructure.

Blockchain Coverage

At its peak, Umbrella Network supported eight blockchain networks: Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Solana, Base, and Linea. Solana was integrated in April 2022, representing the network's first non-EVM chain.

The Solana integration delivered more than 3,800 data feeds to Solana-based applications, including cryptocurrency price pairs, US equities, commodities, a random number generator, and specialty datasets spanning sports statistics, weather, energy, and geolocation. This made Umbrella one of the few decentralized oracles at the time offering real-world non-financial data natively on Solana.

Additional Products

Beyond its core oracle, Umbrella operated two supplementary products:

• Bridge: A cross-chain asset bridge enabling token transfers between supported networks.
• Passport: A product bundled with the Bridge as part of Umbrella's expanded infrastructure offering. Detailed public documentation on its specific function is limited.

In September 2021, Umbrella also acquired Lucidity, a blockchain-based digital advertising verification platform. The acquisition's integration into Umbrella's broader oracle business was not substantially elaborated in public materials.

Team

Umbrella Network was led by Sam Kim (Founding Partner). Other key contributors included John Chen (Senior Advisor), Eugenio Di Santo (Product Owner), and Dariusz Zacharczuk (Blockchain Engineer).

Shutdown

In May 2025, Umbrella Network announced via its official X account that it would cease all operations by the end of September 2025. The team cited the difficult operating environment for smaller data-infrastructure providers, the effect of a prolonged crypto bear market on smallcap project treasuries, and an inability to sustain operations despite cost-cutting efforts.

All active products—the oracle, Bridge, and Passport—shut down on September 30, 2025. A staking wind-down period allowed participants to withdraw their tokens through March 20, 2026. Following closure, the UMB token remained tradeable on Gate.io, Uniswap v2, and PancakeSwap, and the project's smart contracts and code remained publicly available on GitHub under the umbrella-network organization.